Fireball in Texas Sky Turned Out to Be Meteor by Another Name

A fireball that streaked across the Texas sky over the weekend stunned stargazers who wondered whether the bright flash of light was a meteor or a UFO.

Estimated to be five times brighter than a full moon, the Saturday night fireball turned out to be some sort of meteor, either part of the North Taurid shower or a remnant from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to CNN.

"This was definitely what we call a fireball, which by definition is a meteor brighter than the planet Venus," Dr. Bill Cooke, lead for NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, told reporters in a conference call Sunday. "This event was so bright that it was picked up on a NASA meteor camera in the mountains of New Mexico over 500 miles away, which makes it extremely unusual. This was a very bright event."

The fireball was approximately 4 feet wide and about 4,000 pounds, Cooke estimated. There are actually thousands of fireballs that occur in the Earth's atmosphere on a daily basis, but they're either masked by daylight, flying by remote areas, or streaking through the sky at night when most people are asleep.

"A city dweller in the U.S. might expect to see events this bright once or twice per year," Cooke said. "This one was around 8:40 p.m., so there were a lot of people outside and those events get a lot of notice. There would have been far fewer reports if it happens around 3 a.m."